Several KCOD researchers presented their work during the INSPIRE Conference 2017 in Kehl (Germany) and Strasbourg (France). The conference aimed to contribute to the implementation of the European INSPIRE Directive by 2020 and demonstrate the potential of the European Spatial Data Infrastructure resulting from INSPIRE for the environment and the EU Digital society.
On Wednesday, MSc Geomatics student Kotryna Valeckaite presented the approach and first results of the ‘Map of Open SDI’, a project by the Knowledge Centre to assess the openness of national Spatial Data Infrastructures in Europe. The data used in this assessment have been collected by the 2017 MSc Geomatics students of TU Delft, as part of their work for the course ‘Geo-information Organisation and Legislation’. In her presentation, Kotryna revealed some of the main problems and weaknesses of current national SDIs in Europe from the perspective of the international non-expert user.
On Thursday, KCOD researcher Frederika Welle Donker presented the first results of a recent study, commissioned by EuroSDR and in cooperation with Eurogeographics, on the effects of open data policies on the business models of National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies. The study assesses the way the organisations are able to (re)finance their operational costs and to ensure the long-term sustainability of their (open) data.
Also on Thursday, KCOD director Bastaan van Loenen presented his findings on the harmonisation of licences for spatial data in Europe. Bastiaan showed how the process of harmonising licenses for spatial data in 2017 has arrived at the next level. In recent years, more government data, and address data and large-scale topographic data in particular, become available as open data. Moreover, often these datasets come with an internationally interoperable licence. However, still many different – national – licenses are in place, and for users it still is difficult to find data and understand the conditions for the use of spatial data. As a solution, Bastiaan proposes the adoption of a “comply or explain’ policy, in which a standard internationally interoperable license should be used unless this is really not possible.
Also video recordings of the presentations of Kotryna, Frederika and Bastiaan are on available on the Conference website.